BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, who worked as executive producer behind Anthem, reveals that he believes the multiplayer shooter deserved its negative feedback – in fact, many of its reviews apparently brought up valid points.
Darrah, whose portfolio boasts BioWare bangers like the Dragon Age series, recalls Anthem's shaky release and how its Metacritic score fell short of the expected 70 or so after. "Anthem launches February 22nd, 2019, and the reviews are – I won't even say mixed – they're bad. They're bad. The Metacritic at this point is sitting at a 59, which is certainly lower than the 70s that we were targeting," explains Darrah.
"There's a general theme in the reviews, especially the negative ones," he continues. "For the most part, the negative feedback is that the loot is too repetitive, that the activities that you're doing in missions are too repetitive, and the story feels very disjointed, resulting in the overall pacing not being very good."
Surprisingly, however, the former producer actually says he agrees with the not-so-stellar reception Anthem received.
"I pretty much agree with all of this feedback," as Darrah admits. "These are legitimate weaknesses of the game." Why, though? It has to do with Anthem's genre and structure. "In a game like a looter shooter, because you are doing missions over and over again, because you are grinding for gear, the quality of that gear experience, the amount of variety you can experience in the missions – these are mission-critical features."
On the other hand, the story isn't necessarily as important in such games. "Things like the story, they don't really matter that much in a looter shooter because typically, you're going to grind through the story, and then you're going to end up in a repetitive grind for gear. But if you feel like you're doing the same thing all the time in combat, if you feel like the gear that you're grinding for isn't worth the trouble, if you feel like the endgame is lacking or incomplete, then the entire experience collapses."
The ex-developer goes on: "Some of the reviews don't pick up on this, but the reality is that, from the perspective of things like balance, like loot design – even from the perspective of activities – in combat, Anthem isn't really significantly worse than things that BioWare has done in the past. But the lens through which it's being judged is different because in a Mass Effect or a Dragon Age, the combat is there to be enjoyed, but it's to be enjoyed within the framework of this greater overarching story."
As a gameplay loop, it's different. "You aren't expected to do the same mission over and over again. So, the fact that a mission might feel a little disjointed or a mission might feel a little repetitive doesn't matter as much if you only experience it one or two times before you're moving on and continuing the growth of this narrative arc. Whereas in Anthem, that's not the case. You're going to do most missions several times."
Darrah states, "The point is the narrative grind. The point is what you're doing over the long term to make your character stronger to fight and play in the endgame – and to be clear, the narrative in Anthem is worse than the narrative in previous BioWare games." Compared to titles like those within the Dragon Age or Mass Effect series, the Anthem story feels a tad bit… lackluster, and it has a lot to do with delivery.
"The game doesn't really understand how to effectively tell a story in its medium," as Darrah concludes, "in the fact that you are playing with three other probably randos who are making your experience worse." Hey, he said it, folks – not us. And it's not the first time, either. Just last month, the Anthem executive producer detailed how the game's storytelling failed because it was "treating everyone as if they were the same protagonist," too.
